One of the biggest problems with websites is that once a potential customer has had a look and decided not to buy, she or he is not likely to come back and have another look.
This is, of course, rather similar to the problem faced by large high street stores in days of yore. They would put an interesting display in the window – but know that people, having seen and not come in, were less likely to look again.
So the idea came up of changing the window display from time to time. At first this was done once a season. Later that became once every three or four weeks – all to keep customers interested.
For on-line companies the home page of the website is the equivalent to the display on the high street, but changing your website every few weeks is probably not an idea you are interested in hearing, not least because of the technical costs and time involved. But there is another approach.
If you can write a short free report which is of interest to your potential customers and put that on-line then you can direct traffic to your website where people can click and read what you have to say.
Better still. if you can change the report very regularly you can get even more people to come back and of course attract new readers each week.
Finally, if you put past reports in a store on the site where they can still be found, you will have readers finding your reports via Google or being recommended to them by friends and colleagues.
If you would like to see an example of how this works you might care to take a look at the website of the Dyscalculia Information Centre, an organisation run by the same people who run Schools.co.uk
On that home page you will find the Heading “Latest Articles”, and most weeks during term time a new article is added to the top of that list.
Then after a list of about five articles you will find the note saying that other articles can be found by clicking on a link.
Of course it takes a little while to get such a site going and to build a list of past articles, but it is certainly a way of attracting interest and return readers.
This is the sort of project that we undertake for companies on our Velocity Programme. We also undertake research into teacher attitudes, analyse responses, and write and despatch emails to potential customers on a weekly basis.
If you would like to know more about Velocity there are details on our website. Or you can call 01604 880 927 or email Stephen@schools.co.uk
